


Poems for Loners

by KennaM



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: A Slim Volume of Verse, Discount Bookshop, Drabble, Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 05:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KennaM/pseuds/KennaM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Martin Crieff stops by his local secondhand bookshop and finds what has the potential to be damaging information on his first officer.</p><p>Based on a post on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poems for Loners

Martin Crieff passed by the secondhand bookshop every time he went out for groceries, only occasionally deciding to step in when he wanted something new to read during his rare free time. Today, with a van job canceled and nowhere to fly, just happened to be one of those days.

The shop had a sort of familiar dusty, smokey smell to it, common of secondhand bookshops in Martin's experience, and a tired, middle-aged woman sat behind a counter. She glanced up at the skinny off-duty pilot as he walked in, and Martin smiled nervously, quickly shuffling to the nearest shelf, hoping to avoid notice. He was happy not to be the only customer at the moment, and especially glad that the others were too busy looking at books to pay him any attention.

The shelf Martin had landed on seemed to host children's books; there were picture books of talking forest animals and comically drawn people, teaching, he assumed, important life lessons. Martin moved on to the next shelf.

This turned out to be assorted non-fiction, from simple fact books written for kids to thicker volumes on science and history. Martin's eyes swept quickly over the titles, hoping to find something interesting, but he soon realized that there was nothing here for him. He already owned two biographies on the Wright Brothers, one on Alberto Santos-Dumont, and all of the books he'd used to study for his CPLs. What Martin needed now was a good entertaining paperback for some light reading.

On the table behind him was a book bin, the books priced down for the day, and Martin turned to see what it had to offer. He soon realized that it was full of poetry books - anthologies for specific authors, or from specific eras, and so on. Martin was about to turn away, not wanting to spend any longer in the shop than necessary, when his eyes caught on a familiar name. _Douglas Richardson_

 _What?_ he thought to himself, thinking he'd misread it. Martin blinked a couple times then looked again. The spine of the slim book definitely read 'Douglas Richardson'.

Martin pulled the volume out of the bin. It had a simple cover, of an empty desert horizon with some strange object in a mirror in the bottom corner, and it was covered in plastic. The title read "Poems for Loners". _By Douglas Richardson_.

The pilot couldn't suppress a smirk, even as his eyes glazed over in confusion. _Douglas? A book of poems? 'For Loners'? Surely not our Douglas..._

Martin turned the book over - the back was just more of the same horizon, with the publisher's logo in the corner and an ISBN. He flipped it open to a random page.

Because I am a human being, for example,  
I'm cloudsick,  
so look to the sky and love me.  
I want to love you like someone who doesn't exist.

Martin read the poem twice; he wasn't sure if he was supposed to feel inspired, unimpressed, or just confused. He had no way of knowing if _this_ Douglas Richardson was _the_ Douglas Richardson, from MJN. Writing a volume of poetry didn't exactly fit in with Martin's image of Douglas, but the poem did seem... sort of like something Douglas might write? _And,_ Martin thought to himself, _sometimes you really just don't know people._

Martin stopped to think about it. He remembered what it was like to have something on Douglas; he'd liked being able to have something on Douglas. Even if this turned out _not_ to be MJN's Douglas, this listed £5 price for a book of bad poetry was worth it for just the chance to have something on Douglas yet again.

He reached his decision easily. Forgetting his original errand, Martin brought the book to the woman at the till, forming a plan on how most effectively to use this book in the near future.

**Author's Note:**

> Un-Brit-Picked, constructive criticism most welcome! Based on [THIS POST](http://pagesofkenna.tumblr.com/post/23026632338/acaseofidentitea-look-what-i-found-browsing-the) on Tumblr. The book, titled _Poems for Loners_ by a Douglas Richardson, actually exists, and the poem I used here is an actual excerpt, which I found along with a few others after scouring the internet.


End file.
